Education is vital to right parenting.

Why do we have children taking drugs, stealing, begging on the streets, involved in child-prostitution and smoking? They could be doing it for the money or the pleasure, unaware of the dangers to themselves. The thing is if those children have parents, parents who are supposed to be their protectors and educators, what have those parents done to ensure that the children are not involved in such dangerous activities?

Perhaps those parents had not sufficient education or knowledge of the dangers of such pursuits and they think it is alright for the children to experience such things. Without enough education and knowledge or the maturity to understand the seriousness of the problem, there could be parents who think it is alright to do some of the things we believe are wrong or dangerous.

Recently, on You-tube was this video of an Indonesian two-year old obese toddler who smoke forty cigarettes a day. It is not so much the number of cigarettes that grabs the reader as the age of the child. At that age, how could the child be able to take up smoking if not for the introduction to cigarettes by his own father. The father did that to him at the age of eighteen months.

What was worse was the fact that that father said there was nothing wrong with his son smoking as he was in good health. Of course, he was still in good health. Smoking in itself does not kill but it weakens the lungs and the body with the toxins it brings, giving disease such as cancer the opportunity to strike. However, should cancer be detected it may be a little too late for the father to help his son although there are cases of recovery from cancer. Obviously, the poor father does not understand that a month's cigarette smoke may not damage his health but with his addiction to nicotine, could he stop completely and if not, after many months or years of smoking what can possibly happen to his lungs and health. Well, the father probably did not read about any research where cigarette smoke has been found to be hazardous to health.

At this point, I remember that there are individuals who are still healthy in their seventies despite many years of smoking. But then I wish to point out that such individuals have a body well taken care of with enough exercise to get rid of the toxins ingested. They have constantly been active and are not couch potatoes. Their organs are also in tip-top condition and smoking is their only abuse of their bodies.

But then, how many smokers exercise sufficiently to get rid of the toxins inhaled or drink enough water to help their kidneys remove the toxins. Smell the sweat or urine of heavy smokers and the nicotine smell is sure to be evident in them. And if we do not get rid of those toxins, where do you think the toxins will remain? Where else but in the body, of course. The toxins will then poison the only one body that we have been given. Sorry, there is no spare part yet.

If parents understand the dangers of having toxins in the body through smoking or the environment or certain food and drinks, as they love their children, they would certainly not expose their children to the toxins. Therefore, education to all adults is just as important as it is to all children.

Parents can prevent cigarette smoking!

As I teacher, I was very concerned about my children's health, especially those of my gymnasts. One of the devil's tool in bringing down the good health of children is cigarettes. (In an earlier post, I had written about one of my promising gymnast's fall from possible fame.)

One of the things I used to show my students in order for them to understand the effect of cigarette smoke on their body was to light a candle or a kerosene lamp. A glass funnel is then place over this light. After some time they can see a thin layer of smoke stain on the glass. I asked them to imagine what would happen if the funnel were their throat and lungs. With the funnel, we can use a soft brush and sop to clean the stain off. Can we push a long enough brush down our throat and into the lungs to remove the stain?

I would also point to the yellowish stain on smokers' fingers and teeth. with merely a little smoke grazing the nails and teeth, such yellow stains can be seen; what about the amount of smoke puffed into the throat and lungs?

Another object I used to demostrate this was the wok. I would show them the bottom of the wok and asked them whether they know where the thick layer of black soot came from. Yes, most of them were intelligent enough to know it came from the smoke. Well, what about the smoke that goes into the throat and lungs of smokers?
After years of smoking, how thick would it be? Would it not caused the air-passages in the lungs to be narrower limiting amount of precious oxygen bearing air reaching the various organs and cells of our body?

When it came to my children, I am a walking example of a healthy individual who does not smoke.

Whenever we found smokers around, I reminded them of the foul tobacco smell and got ourselves to move away from such a lousy smell.

Sometimes, it was just impossible to avoid such cigarette smoke. When it happened, I would have my children be aware of the foul cigarette smell on our clothes. How can anyone be comfortable with such a smell emitting from a person while the rest of the world bathe often to feel and smell clean and fresh while some even use mild perfume to have themselves smell presentable.

The above methods were used by me to educate my children on cigarette smoke with success as they do not smoke, and nowadays they are the ones who pull me away from smokers.

I did tell them about my once promising gymnast's unfortunate fate so as to have them aware of the results of smoking cigarettes.

There is nothing pleasant about cigarette smoking. And what is important here is that it is the truth. A first timer at cigarette smoking would cough and choke on the smoke. It would definitely be unpleasant. With the above awareness in place earlier, there is no way your child can take up cigarette smoking.

Well, the danger is out there, for cigarettes can lead to other drugs. Plan to overcome this danger and awareness removes it from our children.